Aaron Elkins: Uneasy Relations

“Ow! Ai-!” Rowley teetering on the rim of the tub, one arm still around Audrey’s neck, flailed with the other one, struggling for balance, but a last, sharp elbow in the gut (“Whoof!”) sent the fork flying and tipped him over backward. In the two of them plunged with a huge sploosh, the barbecue fork plopping in a moment later with its own modest splish.

And so what might have culminated in high tragedy ended instead as low comedy, in a foofaraw of spluttering, splashing, and thrashing of arms and legs. Buck dived gallantly but unnecessarily in (the tub was only four feet deep) to “rescue” Audrey, hit his head on the sitting ledge, and wobbled dazedly to his feet, from where he had to be led unsteadily up the three steps by Audrey. Eager hands reached out to help them, but she batted them away like pesky mosquitoes. Audrey didn’t like being rescued any more than she liked being abducted.

Rowley too hit his head, stood up, and sank dizzily back onto the ledge, from which he was unceremoniously fished out by the wrists by Gideon and Fausto. Passive and unresisting, he was then led away by Fausto and another police official who was there as a guest. Dripping, drooping, and utterly wilted, leaving a snail-like trail of moisture in his wake, he looked like an old sneaker that had been put through the wringer one time too many.

The barbecue fork, resting quietly on the bottom of the tub, was left for the pool attendant to retrieve.

Gideon spent the next several hours at New Mole House, getting his statement recorded and transcribed – a long, fatiguing process – and then, over coffee in the break room, sharing notes with Fausto (who had been busy interrogating Rowley). Then he was driven back to the hotel, where, hoping to go up to the room and call it a night, he was spotted by Pru as he crossed the lobby and hauled off, protesting, to the Barbary Bar. There he found everyone, including Julie, congregated and awaiting him and his explanation of the evening’s bizarre events.

Happily Julie had already filled them in on the faking of the First Family by Ivan, and the fact that Sheila Chan had not been the victim of a natural landslide but of murder, so he was spared going through all that. She had also enlightened them on why the mere mention of Catalan Bay had precipitated the extraordinary episode that had followed. Beyond that much, of course, she was as much in the dark as they were, so the rest was up to him. He considered begging off till morning, but on reflection he decided he owed them more consideration than that. After all, he had come close – sometimes extremely close – to believing each of them, his friends and colleagues, a multiple murderer.

He ordered a Scotch and water, settled back in his chair beneath a wall of photographs, and, under the disinterested black-and-white gazes of Michael Palin and John and Yoko, gratefully swallowed down half the drink and wearily began.

It was a combination of things, he told them, none of them really conclusive in itself, that brought it all to its extraordinary conclusion. What had first gotten him started on the right track was Rowley’s reaction to Lester’s joking comment about the Nobel Prize. That had made him think of Rowley’s earlier response to a comment of Pru’s during the group visit to the Rock. (“Yeah, but you could have done a better job with the weather,” she had said, provoking smiles from everybody but Rowley, who had replied, in all earnestness, “But what could I possibly have done about the weather?”) And that, in turn had reminded him of how Rowley had swallowed Discover magazine’s April Fool’s story about the Neanderthal tuba, hook, line, and sinker.

“I fail to see where you’re going with this,” Audrey said crankily. She and Buck, having returned from police headquarters themselves not long before, were still wearing the clumsy, collarless suicide-watch paper uniforms given to them by the police to replace their sopping clothes. On Audrey’s neck were two flesh-colored Band-Aids. “If there’s a point, I wish you’d get to it. I’d like to go to bed before morning.”

“Easy, honey,” Buck gentled. “The man’s doing his best.” His big hand was steadily, gently massaging the nape of her neck.

The point, Gideon said, was that, of all the people who might have been behind the killings, Rowley Boyd was the only one who could possibly have taken seriously the newspaper story about how Gideon’s presentation at St. Michael’s Cave was going to be “the most sensational expose of a scientific scam in history.” And given the commemorative nature of the meetings, the fifth anniversary of the Europa Point dig, and their location, here in Gibraltar, what else could the scam in question be but the faking of Gibraltar Woman and the First Family?

“And that’s why he tried to electrocute you?” a skeptical Adrian demanded. “To prevent your revelation of the hoax?”

“Yes.”

“I fail to see how that makes sense,” Corbin said bluntly. “It was Rowley who saved you from being electrocuted. I was right there. He was the one that called your attention to the absence of a rubber mat.”

“No, it was Buck who saved me from being electrocuted.”

“Me?” Buck exclaimed, looking pleased. “What did I do? I never even noticed it.”

“No, but on that little tour just before, you told Rowley what I was going to be talking about – erect posture, varicose veins, birth problems – so it finally got through to him that I had no big hoax to reveal. There was no point in killing me; it would only be another complication, another risk. So he told me about the mat – which he was perfectly aware of, since he’s the one who set the whole electrocution thing up in the first place.”

“But you can’t know that,” Audrey said. “Or has Rowley confessed? ”

“Not as of the time I left New Mole House. Fausto says he’s not saying anything until he sees a solicitor in the morning. And you’re right, at this point I can’t know he set it up, or that he’s the one who tried to shove me off the Rock – who did shove me off the Rock. I told you, there really isn’t any one piece of incontrovertible evidence at this point; there’s a combination of a lot of things that all point in one direction: that it was Rowley who killed Sheila, it was Rowley who killed Ivan, and it was Rowley who was trying to kill me.”

“Now there’s another thing right there,” Adrian declared truculently, pouring some Tullamore Dew – rather more than his usual few drops – into his coffee. “If it was Ivan who perpetrated the hoax, as you claim, then why in the world would Rowley be the one going around killing anybody and everybody to keep it a secret? Are you telling us he was involved in it originally? With Ivan?”

“Well, as far as anyone knows,” Gideon said, “Rowley didn’t even know Ivan at the time of the Guadalcanal dig, so I’m assuming-”

“Assuming,” Adrian sniffed.

“-assuming that he wasn’t, but at some point later on, Ivan must have told him about it, or accidentally let it slip. After all, Rowley was probably closer to him than anyone else, especially these last few years, as Ivan was declining.”

“But then why would Rowley want to kill him?” Buck asked.

“Because-”

“More assumptions?” Adrian said.

“Look, Adrian, if you-” he began heatedly, but stopped himself. As far as anger went – real, teeth-gnashing anger – Gideon had a pretty high boiling point. It was an emotion that didn’t come naturally to him; he’d felt it only once or twice in his life. But temper was another story. It wasn’t that hard to get under his skin, and the belligerent, confrontational, openly skeptical nature of the their questioning had done just that. They were acting as if the whole mess was his fault. Still, he understood their feelings and he did sympathize. Put a lid on it, Oliver, he told himself. This is all coming as an extremely unpleasant shock to them.